Bloomberg Originals
Bloomberg Originals produces shows on the intersection of business and culture, covering topics such as climate change, technology, finance, and sports.
Russian Arms and Oil Keep India From Breaking With Moscow
India cannot make a clean break with Russia while Russian equipment underpins much of its military and Russian oil remains a major import, even as the US is its indispensable export market. Bloomberg shows how that bind grew from a Soviet-era relationship built on technology transfer and licensed arms production, then deepened after the Ukraine invasion as discounted crude made Russia India’s leading seaborne oil supplier.
LIV Golf Seeks New Funding as Saudi Support Recedes
LIV Golf’s future is uncertain as Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund prepares to end its backing and the league seeks new financing, Bloomberg reports. League leader Scott O’Neil says a lead investor has signed a board-approved term sheet, though the deal is nonbinding; Bloomberg’s Reshmi Basu identifies BC Partners as the prospective investor and says potential backers have questioned the player equity required. The league must now show it can become a commercial business after more than $5 billion in Saudi spending failed to produce a television audience comparable with the PGA Tour’s.
Germany’s Industrial Model Is Buckling Under Energy Costs and Chinese Competition
Germany’s industrial model has become a drag on growth, Bloomberg’s Marilen Martin argues, as the advantages that sustained it—cheap Russian gas, open global trade and leadership in high-value manufacturing—have eroded. Economist Martin Ademmer says the decline in output since 2018 increasingly reflects a lasting loss of economic potential rather than a cyclical downturn. Higher energy costs, Chinese competition and a more protectionist trading environment now leave Berlin trying to defend industry with limited fiscal and political room to maneuver.
Illicit Revenues Help Sustain Myanmar’s Fragmented Civil War
Bloomberg Investigates reporter Matthew Campbell argues that Myanmar’s civil war has become an income system as well as a struggle for territory and political control. With the military and its allies controlling an estimated 40% to 45% of the country, competing armed groups can monetize mining access, border crossings, illicit trade and scam compounds—revenues Campbell says can make continued war more profitable than peace. The result, the reporting shows, is borne by civilians displaced, impoverished and separated by a conflict with no decisive end in sight.
ICE Raids in Charlotte Triggered a Prolonged Local Spending Decline
Bloomberg Businessweek reports that DHS raids in Charlotte’s immigrant neighborhoods emptied commercial corridors, cutting customers, workers and household income from the local economy. Business owners including Manolo’s Bakery’s Manuel Betancur say fear of arrests sharply reduced sales and forced staffing losses, while University of Pennsylvania economist Zeke Hernandez estimates enforcement-targeted areas saw $14 billion less card spending and a sustained decline in foot traffic. DHS says its campaign makes communities safer, but the reporting documents effects reaching businesses, schools and families beyond those detained.
A Super El Niño Threatens Crops, Shipping and Energy Systems
A potentially historic El Niño is unfolding in a world already 1.4°C warmer than before industrialisation, creating conditions in which a natural Pacific cycle can intensify heat, drought and flooding and carry local shocks into the global economy. Akshat Rathi says the added ocean heat can make existing extremes more severe; in Panama, reduced rainfall has already prompted cargo limits at the canal, threatening to disrupt trade flows and energy markets beyond the country.
Brazil’s Deforestation Crackdown Is Shifting Pressure to Bolivia
Bloomberg Investigates reports that Brazil’s tougher anti-deforestation enforcement has coincided with accelerating forest loss across the border in Bolivia, particularly around Santa Cruz and San Ignacio de Velasco. The investigation examines how Brazilian agricultural capital, cheaper land and proposed transport links are reshaping that frontier, including a reported deal involving a 30,019-hectare managed-forest property. Bolivian officials argue that investment can raise productivity without extensive clearing; environmentalists and Indigenous leaders warn that the same expansion model could shift Amazon destruction rather than contain it.
Brazil’s Deforestation Crackdown May Be Shifting Pressure Into Bolivia
Brazil’s tougher enforcement helped cut Amazon deforestation, but Bloomberg’s Fabiano Maisonnave reports that clearing is accelerating across the border in Bolivia’s Santa Cruz department, where industrial agriculture is advancing toward San Ignacio de Velasco. Environmental researcher Sandra Cuellar says 78% of Bolivia’s deforestation occurs in Santa Cruz, while Maisonnave raises the question of whether Brazilian commodity producers are shifting pressure into a frontier where land ownership is difficult to trace. A confidential meeting between Brazilian producers and Bolivian and Brazilian ministers has added to concerns over who will control the expansion and what it will mean for the remaining forest.
Russian Arms Demand Drove North Korea’s $22 Billion Windfall
Bloomberg Economics estimates that North Korea earned as much as $22 billion abroad from 2022 to 2025, nearly four times its revenue in the previous four years, despite sweeping sanctions. The source argues that Russia’s demand for weapons has supplied the largest windfall, while cryptocurrency theft and trade with China provide convertible currency and essential imports. Adam Farrar says the result is not broad prosperity but greater capacity for Kim Jong Un’s regime to fund military modernization and preserve its rule.
Pakistan Courts Trump for Capital, Energy and Diplomatic Leverage
Pakistan is using its access to Donald Trump’s administration to seek investment, financing and regional economic openings, not merely diplomatic prominence. Bloomberg’s reporting shows Islamabad pairing commercial deals—from the Roosevelt Hotel redevelopment to minerals and crypto agreements—with mediation between the US and Iran, while preserving its ties with China. The wager, Daniel Ten Kate argues, is that a relationship built around Trump and Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, can secure capital and legitimacy—though it remains vulnerable to Trump’s shifting interests.
Texas Uses State Grants to Build a Commercial-Space Cluster
Texas is building a statewide commercial-space industry around NASA talent in Houston, launch sites on the coast and in West Texas, and manufacturing and testing operations in Central Texas. Bloomberg reports that state grants are reinforcing a model in which NASA contracts help companies finance early development, while Texas offers industrial capacity and a business-friendly environment to keep them expanding locally. Loren Grush, Bloomberg’s space reporter, says SpaceX’s scale has made the strategy more visible—and its environmental and local costs around Boca Chica harder to ignore.
Blocked Homeownership Is Pushing Gen Z Toward Riskier Trades
Bloomberg argues that young investors’ turn toward meme stocks, options, crypto and gambling-adjacent markets is less a simple taste for risk than a response to blocked financial milestones. Justina Lee, Allison Schrager, Charlie Wells and others frame Gen Z’s trading posture as shaped by unaffordable housing, weaker early-career prospects, social-media wealth cues and a long bull market that has made high-risk bets feel both accessible and necessary.
China’s Brain-Chip Startups Race Toward Commercial Medical Use
Bloomberg Primer reports on the race to commercialize brain-computer interfaces through NeuroXess, a Shanghai startup testing an implanted device in a paralyzed patient. The source presents BCI less as near-term human enhancement than as an assistive medical technology still facing safety, regulatory and reimbursement tests, while arguing that China’s policy support could help its companies compete with better-funded US rivals.
FIFA’s Expanded World Cup Pushes Costs Onto Fans and Host Cities
Bloomberg argues that the expanded 2026 World Cup is built to generate record revenue for FIFA while shifting much of the cost and risk onto fans and host cities. The tournament’s 48-team, three-country format creates more matches, broadcast inventory and ticketing opportunities, but dynamic pricing, resale fees, transport costs, visas and security obligations are making attendance and hosting more expensive. The result, the piece says, is a World Cup marketed as a mass global event while increasingly priced and managed like a premium spectacle.
23andMe Bets a Nonprofit Model Can Revive Its DNA Platform
Bloomberg’s Emily Chang profiles Anne Wojcicki’s attempt to rebuild 23andMe after a collapse from a $5.7bn public-market valuation to bankruptcy. Wojcicki argues the company’s mistake was trying to be understood as a consumer, diagnostics and therapeutics business at once, but says its genetic database still has social and scientific value if recast as a nonprofit “open science platform.” The interview frames the comeback around the unresolved problem that made 23andMe valuable and vulnerable: persuading people to trust it with highly sensitive DNA data.
China Is Betting on Megaregions to Escape the Middle-Income Trap
Bloomberg’s documentary argues that Hong Kong’s Northern Metropolis is not just a local development plan but a test case for China’s attempt to turn megaregions into a new growth engine. The project would convert rural land near Shenzhen into a technology hub linking Hong Kong more tightly to the mainland’s Greater Bay Area, an 11-city, $2tn economy. The source presents the strategy as a bid to escape slower growth through concentration of people, capital and ideas, while showing the displacement, political constraints and institutional frictions that come with it.
SpaceX IPO Could Push a Speculative $2 Trillion Valuation Into Index Funds
Bloomberg Originals argues that SpaceX’s planned IPO would test public markets in ways that go beyond its projected record size. The company is seeking a valuation approaching $2 trillion on revenue still far below that level, with investors being asked to price Starlink, launch services, AI infrastructure, orbital data centers and Mars ambitions into one company. The report frames the offering as both a bet on Elon Musk’s ability to turn speculative infrastructure into operating businesses and a risk that index mechanics could push that bet into ordinary portfolios.
Tracy McGrady Turns Bills Stake Into Broader Sports Business Platform
Tracy McGrady told Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly that his investment in the Buffalo Bills was the result of a long-running ambition to move from athlete to owner, not a celebrity stake in a franchise. The NBA Hall of Famer described ownership as a way into new rooms and relationships, while tying the same logic to his NBC role, his China business ties and Ones Basketball League, the one-on-one platform he is trying to build from his own experience as an overlooked teenage prospect.
Electricity Grids Become the New Bottleneck for AI Growth
Bloomberg Primer argues that electricity grids have become a central constraint on economic growth as AI, electric vehicles and heat pumps push demand higher after decades of flat consumption in many Western countries. The piece contrasts China’s continuous grid buildout with stalled Western systems, and follows efforts including superconducting cables, grid-stabilizing machines for renewable-heavy systems and Nigerian mini-grids. Its central claim is that countries able to expand and stabilize power delivery will be better positioned to capture the next wave of industrial and digital growth.
Oregon Lawyers Challenge ICE Detentions That Outrun Access to Counsel
Bloomberg Investigates follows Portland-based Innovation Law Lab as it challenges the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement in court and tries to free detainees before transfer or fast-track deportation makes relief harder to obtain. The lawyers’ central argument is that due process is being eroded not only by arrests and detention, but by speed: immigrants may have formal rights, they say, yet be unable to exercise them without timely access to counsel. DHS disputes that account, saying ICE does not deny counsel as a matter of policy and that any denials are isolated or justified.
Replacing Starmer Would Not Change Britain’s Fiscal Arithmetic
Bloomberg Originals argues that Keir Starmer’s rapid loss of political authority reflects a deeper British problem: voters want fast improvement, while weak growth, high debt costs, persistent inflation and limited fiscal room leave little capacity to deliver it. Alex Wickham, Lizzy Burden and Alice Gledhill frame the churn of UK prime ministers as a response to that gap, but say changing leaders does not remove the constraints. The bond market, in their account, is now central to the politics, narrowing Labour’s choices and making any challenge to Starmer economically consequential.
Tennis Players Seek More Revenue Without a League’s Bargaining Machinery
Jess Pegula, speaking with Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly on Bloomberg’s The Deal, argues that professional tennis players need more leverage in the sport’s economics but lack the league structure and union machinery that make collective bargaining familiar in major US team sports. Pegula says players are trying to organize across the WTA and ATP to seek a larger share of revenue, especially from the Grand Slams, while also pushing for fairer prize money and a shorter calendar. Her case is shaped by an unusual vantage point: current player, WTA Player Council member and daughter of Buffalo Bills and Sabres owners Terry and Kim Pegula.
ICE Courthouse Arrests Turn Case Dismissals Into Fast-Track Deportations
Bloomberg Investigates follows Portland legal aid group Innovation Law Lab as it challenges the Department of Homeland Security over President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign. The lawyers argue that ICE is turning immigration court appearances into arrest opportunities by seeking dismissals, detaining people after hearings and moving them into faster deportation proceedings with fewer rights. Executive director Stephen Manning frames the fight as a due-process battle over whether immigrants can still use the legal system without being exposed to detention.
Documents Show Epstein Turned Elite Access Into a Transaction Network
Bloomberg’s review of thousands of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails, appointment books and message logs argues that his influence rested less on proximity to famous people than on a transactional role inside elite networks. The documents depict Epstein as a broker who used wealth, introductions, gifts, donations, legal and financial services, and access to young women to embed himself across finance, politics, academia and global business, even as allegations against him accumulated.
Governments Commit $10 Billion to Loosen China’s Rare-Earth Grip
Bloomberg argues that China’s rare-earth power rests less on ownership of mineral deposits than on its dominance of refining and magnet production, the chokepoints that turn ore into components for cars, electronics and weapons. The report says Beijing has already used that position as leverage, including against Japan in 2010 and in renewed trade tensions with the US, where automakers warned that magnet shortages could shut factories. Western governments are now putting billions into alternative supply chains, but the article frames the realistic goal as diversification over many years, not independence from China.
Sixth Street’s Sports Bet Depends on Infrastructure and Global Growth
Sixth Street co-founder Alan Waxman told Bloomberg’s The Deal that sports investing only works if patient capital can stay in place long enough for media rights, global audiences, infrastructure and adjacent real estate to support rising team valuations. In a conversation with Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly, Waxman argued that the firm’s stakes and investments across the Patriots, Spurs, Celtics, Bay FC and European football are built less around short-term private equity exits than around scarce assets, durable leagues and alignment with long-term owners.
US Revives Panama Jungle Training Amid Latin America Military Buildup
Bloomberg reports that the US military’s revived jungle training in Panama is both a readiness exercise and a signal of Washington’s harder posture in Latin America under Donald Trump. David Alire Garcia frames the return to Fort Sherman after a 25-year hiatus against the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the administration’s “Trump Corollary” language, and a broader regional buildup that has unsettled Panamanian officials and sovereignty advocates. The piece argues that the training is not evidence of an imminent operation, but it shows the US preparing for jungle warfare while redefining security cooperation in a region with a long memory of American intervention.
Private Credit Faces a Confidence Test as AI Hits Software Loans
Private credit’s roughly $1.8 trillion boom is facing its first major test as a crisis of confidence rather than a broad default cycle, Bloomberg Originals argues. The report says the rapid growth of lending outside banks has left investors questioning private loan marks, limited liquidity in retail-facing funds, and underwriting assumptions around software borrowers whose growth prospects may be undermined by artificial intelligence.
Softball’s Growth Depends on Television Access and Player-Centered Storytelling
AJ Andrews argues on Bloomberg’s The Deal that baseball and softball can grow by giving fans more access to athletes’ personalities, backstories and identities, not by adding artificial spectacle. Andrews points to the World Baseball Classic as proof that visible pride and emotion can deepen fan attachment, while Alex Rodriguez makes a parallel case that baseball leaves value unused by hiding players’ preparation and personal stories. For softball, Andrews says the lesson is exposure: when games and players are put on television and treated as distinct, compelling stories, audiences have a reason to follow.
AI Demand Is Stress-Testing the Global Semiconductor Supply Chain
Bloomberg’s primer argues that the AI boom is turning the semiconductor supply chain into a strategic stress test, raising demand for advanced processors while exposing how dependent the industry remains on a handful of companies, machines and manufacturing clusters. The source traces that pressure through ASML’s lithography tools, AMD’s AI chip designs, TSMC’s concentration of advanced fabrication in Taiwan, and competing US and Chinese efforts to rebuild domestic capacity. Its central claim is that chips are becoming more economically and politically essential just as their production remains physically fragile, capital-intensive and difficult to replicate.